Apophis - a malware tool that is smart and can steal 30,000 people's personal details

If anyone thinks our personal information is safe, think again. Panda Labs, an International security software company, recently discovered a tool, which appears to be stealing personal and financial details on a global basis.

From Panda's press release:

A version of Apophis, a tool used by cyber-crooks to handle information stolen from users infected by several variants of the Nuklus family of Trojans, stores data belonging to over 30,000 users from more than twenty countries. PandaLabs has been able to access a file with some of the stolen data. This file kept encrypted confidential data belonging to almost 1,500 people from the USA, Canada and the UK.

Surprisingly enough, this data contained, in addition to information about bank and email accounts, information such as the users’ postal address, phone number or their credit card expiry date. With this information, cyber-crooks not only can get the users’ money, but also impersonate them and use their identity to make purchases, bank transfers, etc., in their name.

In more simple terms, this gives criminals the ability to clean out your financial resources, then use your information to get more credit, which you will be hounded for when the bills aren't paid.

Besides that, stolen identities are used by illegal immigrants, criminals and some claim, terrorists to blend into society.

Even worse, this tool is considered smart -- it actively searches out the information criminals desire.

According to Panda, this tool can store over 30,000 records. That is a lot of people that can be victimized by just one of these nasty devices.

More information, including some screen shots from the Panda blog, here.

The press release can be viewed, here.

Panda also offers a free scan to see if your computer might be infected, here.